’Gracious me, I think I must hire a hall. I have just read this scrawl over. Sounds rather muzzy, don’t it? But it’s this poor brain of mine that has got full of confusion and cobwebs and theories of equality, when I wasn’t attending to it. My arms had the whole day’s work to do—as they remind me at this minute; and the Cerebral Hemispheres laid their heads, or their half-heads together, when I was busy with the salmon; and entered into a conspiracy against me; and began to make pictures—ghosts, phantom earls, and romantic shepherds and peasant-poets, and I don’t know what kind of dreams of a deer stalker walking down Wabash Avenue. But, as I said, to-morrow I start for Paris, thank goodness; and in that calmer atmosphere I hope to come to my senses again; and I will send you a long account of Lily Selden’s marriage—though your last letter to me was a fraud: what do I care about the C.M.C.A.? _This_ letter, anyhow, you must burn; I don’t feel like reading it over again myself, or perhaps I would save you the trouble; but you may depend on it that the one I shall send you from Paris will be quite sane. ’Second P.S.—Of course you must manage Jack Huysen with a little discretion. I don’t want to be drawn into it any more than I can help; I mean, I would just hate to write to him direct and ask him for a particular favour; but this is a very little one, and you know him as well as any of us. And mind you burn this letter—instantly—the moment you have read it—for it is just full of nonsense and wool-gathering; and _it will not occur again. Toujours a toi_. C.H.’ ’What have you been writing all this time?’ her father said, when she rose. ’A letter—to Emma Kerfoot.’ ’It will make her stare. You don’t often write long letters.’ ’I do not,’ said she, gravely regarding the envelope; and then she added solemnly: ’But this is the record of a chapter in my life that is now closed for ever—at least, I hope so.’ *CHAPTER III.* *HESITATIONS.* The waggonette stood at the door; Miss Carry’s luggage was put in; and her father was waiting to see her off. But the young lady herself seemed unwilling to take the final step; twice she went back into the inn, on some pretence or another; and each time she came out she looked impatiently around, as if wondering at the absence of some one. ’Well, ain’t you ready yet?’ her father asked. ’I want to say good-bye to Ronald,’ she said half angrily. ’Oh, nonsense—you are not going to America. Why, you will be back in ten days or a fortnight. See here, Carry,’ he added, ’are you sure you don’t want me to go part of the way with you?’ ’Not at all,’ she said promptly. ’It is impossible for Mary to mistake the directions I wrote to her; and I shall find her in the Station Hotel at Inverness all right. Don’t you worry about me, pappa.’ She glanced along the road again, in the direction of the keeper’s cottage; but there was no one in sight.